I find that an easier way to get the list of columns is to drag them from the object explorer in SSMS. If you expand the table object's columns list, you can then drag the "Columns" parent entry into a query window, to get the comma seperated list of columns.

Some articles are well worth reading twice.I've spent all afternoon working for the first time with EXCEPT instead of the usual LEFT JOIN and checking for NULL, and it's taken half the keystrokes with no noticeable performance cost. Thanks!

Good article Stephen I am going to write the points down of this article in some notes I am gathering.

I wish that they would design the inverse of the INTERSECT operator. As it will show you all the rows matching from both sides of the statement. If they had a NOT INTERSECT it seems like it would return the results of all the aforementioned UNION queries.

Again a great article, but if I could throw in one little tiny technicality to this I would feel much better

While I realize the emphasis of your article was against 2 tables, and therefore you wrote it as such, I would like to point out that the left and right side of EXCEPT, INTERSECT, and UNION Operators is the comparison of 'query results' and not 'tables'. Though a seemingly minor point, I felt necessary to point it out